2017 Aston Martin DB11

A first turn in the most important new Aston in years.

MIKE DUFF

May 2, 2016

We often get invited to drive what automakers assure us are prototype vehicles, but which turn out to be carefully cosseted show ponies rather than hardworking test mules. Doing so allows automakers to provide an early taste of a new model while still offering the plausible deniability of being able to say, “That’s not the final spec,” if we don’t like something.

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A Feral Fug

That’s not the case here; we have no doubt that this gnarly looking Aston Martin DB11 is a well-worn development prototype. For starters, there’s the ugly dazzle-pattern camouflage that is peeling off in places, and it has a feral fug that suggests lots of engineers have spent many hours sweating inside of it. Yet the biggest surprise is the baby-blue leather trim. “Hideous, isn’t it?” says our chaperone for the day, Aston head of chassis development Matt Becker. Apparently the company’s prototypes are often finished in the colors nobody actually orders. “They must have had a fair bit of this left lying around. I can’t think why,” he adds, with a nice bit of English understatement.

Even starting the prototype DB11 so that we can experience it—at the Bridgestone test track near Adria, Italy—turns out to be a challenge. A laptop needs to be plugged in to ensure that the car’s ECUs are running the latest versions of the chassis and powertrain software, and the first time the engine fires up, the TFT instrument cluster stays blank. A technician does the automotive equivalent of a reboot—disconnecting the battery’s negative lead for 30 seconds—and a second attempt brings both the engine and the gauges to life. “But the graphics aren’t finalized yet,” Becker advises.

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Much else isn’t, either. Aston Martin is letting us experience the car several months ahead of the official press launch, and the “that will be fixed” line gets a fair airing: from the transmission shunt when the car is put in gear and the stiffness of the steering-wheel buttons to the whistling noise as air comes past its preproduction door seals. But the car is close enough to final spec to reveal answers to some of the bigger questions about what is Aston’s most important new model in a generation.

Much feels familiar. The low-slung seating position and the high beltline are straight from the DB9 this car replaces, as are the P, R, N, and D gear-selector buttons laid out on the dashboard in place of a conventional shifter. But plenty is new, too. The TFT instrument cluster features a central tachometer that incorporates a speed readout and is flanked by display screens on either side, all crisply rendered. The steering wheel contains more controls than any previous Aston, including two paddle-like buttons to separately alter the dynamic modes for both the chassis and the powertrain, while the presence of a Mercedes-Benz control stalk for the wipers and turn signals gives confirmation of the Daimler electronic architecture that underpins everything. (This is a result of the companies’ technical partnership; we also note that the prototype’s key is a Mercedes fob, complete with three-pointed star.)

Enter the Turbos

The new 600-hp 5.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-12 engine produces vastly more torque than its naturally aspirated predecessor, with the full 516 lb-ft available from just 1500 rpm, and it’s immediately obvious once we get rolling that it’s a very different powerplant. Becker admits that getting the chassis to handle the engine’s output without complaint was one of his team’s bigger challenges (unlike Ferrari V-8s, the torque output isn’t limited in lower gears), but on the dry asphalt of the handling course, the DB11’s ultrawide Bridgestones find enough grip to deal with the urge without drama.

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The engine pulls strongly and with little lag. Indeed, to feel any hesitation, you have to set out to deliberately provoke the engine by manually upshifting into a higher gear and then standing on the gas—something the transmission will always avoid in drive by downshifting. From 3000 rpm on up, we couldn’t honestly discern any delay in response, with linear thrust continuing to build all the way to the 7000-rpm fuel cutoff. It feels effortless in a way that no current Aston does, but at the same time, it lacks the yowling top-end soundtrack of today’s naturally aspirated V-12. Instead, it emits a bass-heavy exhaust note laid over a muscular induction roar. Such is the price of progress: We’re told to expect the turbocharged engine to produce 25 percent better fuel-economy ratings.

Considering Aston Martin’s claim of a 3900-pound dry weight (meaning without fluids) and the grip the chassis generates, the DB11 feels impressively agile through the twisty sections of the track we’re on. Becker previously served as head of chassis development for Lotus, and we detect something Lotus-like in the linearity of the steering and the feel that comes through the electrical power assist. In the softest mode, GT, the stability-control system does a good job of staying nearly invisible as it intervenes to help keep the Aston on its chosen line—you have to go into a tight turn way too fast before you’ll provoke understeer, and Becker says that even that tendency will be reduced with more work on the torque-vectoring differential.

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Nor is this the tire-smoking monster that the engine’s output numbers might lead you to expect. Even the powertrain’s most aggressive modes, Sport and Sport Plus, don’t deliver meaningful rear-end sliding under big throttle openings, although they do sharpen the pedal’s response and increase the engine’s volume levels. Our only significant complaint was with the gearbox’s leisurely upshifts in its manual mode, with a too-discernible delay between pulling the paddle behind the steering wheel and feeling the next gear arrive. Becker assures us that this will be tightened up by production and that the stroke of the paddles will be reduced by half.

The track is too smooth to really assess ride, but the DB11 feels pliant while also nicely resisting body roll, even with the dampers in their softest setting. The brakes are good, too; Aston isn’t offering carbon-ceramics, but the iron discs deal with consistent hard use without complaint. Long before we get bored with caning the DB11 around what amounts to a private racetrack, Becker suggests moving to the wet-handling circuit, where tarmac is flooded under a constant depth of water to give a low-grip surface.

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It’s certainly that. With adhesion levels reduced to little more than that of a shot glass on a mahogany bar top, the Aston’s handling balance tips dramatically. The stability control abandons all subtlety as it attempts to keep the DB11 on track, and the back end squirms and battles for grip. Switching the ESC to its permissive Sport mode reveals just how hard the system was working to tame the V-12’s torque output, with even the smallest throttle applications delivering the unmistakable sensation of yaw as the back end makes a break for freedom; in this mode, a fair amount of rotation is allowed before the electronics step in to restore order. The system can be fully deactivated, and Becker was happy to demonstrate that, with enough talent behind the wheel, the DB11 can be turned into a $215,000 drift machine that can do pretty much a whole lap while traveling sideways.

We leave Italy with many questions unanswered. We can’t tell you how the DB11 deals with a rough road or a traffic jam. We can’t even tell you how its central display screen looks or how easy it is to navigate among different functions, as the prototype’s system wasn’t working. What we can say is probably what matters most: Like the best of its predecessors, the DB11 is on course to be fast, effortless, and exciting, pretty much in equal measure.